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we agree, but
he did not like this.”
    “Why not?”
    “He did not say.”
    “You knew he was a thief?”
    “Of course. It is why I knew him,” he said, with a note of
surprise.
    “And it didn’t make you suspicious that he wanted to hire
someone else?”
    “A little, oui. But many men lose their courage.”
    “You figured that was what it was?”
    “Twelve years, it is a long time, no?”
    I sat up in my chair and gripped the receiver closer to my ear.
“What’s this about twelve years Pierre?”
    “You do not know?”
    “Know what? Was he inside?”
    “He did not tell to you?”
    “No, he didn’t,” I said, reaching for my pen and testing the ink
on the top sheet of my manuscript. “What was he in for?”
    “Why, he killed a man.”
    “Murder?”
    “Non. This man, he try to be a hero – to stop Michael taking his
diamonds.”
    “So he was a jewel thief?” I asked, meanwhile sketching the
outline of a prone body with a question mark planted right in the
centre of it.
    “Diamonds, Charlie. This is what he would steal. Only
diamonds.”
    “And someone tried to stop him?”
    “A guard, oui.”
    “And he killed him?”
    “It seemed so.”
    I thought about that for a moment. About the man I’d sat
opposite in the poorly lit café. About how he’d seemed just about
as normal as you could imagine. Not a convict, I wouldn’t have
said. Not a killer.
    “Where was this?” I asked, sketching out a diamond roughly the
size of the body I’d drawn.
    “In Amsterdam.”
    “And he went to a Dutch prison?”
    “Oui.”
    “They didn’t deport him?”
    “What is this deport?”
    “Throw him out of the country. Send him back to the States. I
thought that was what happened.”
    “This I do not know.”
    I went over the hook of the question mark again with my pen,
building on the layers of ink until the lines became blurred. Then
I ground the biro around and around the dot.
    “Pierre, did he tell you anything about the job? Did he want you
to sell something on?”
    “Non. Mais – it was not diamonds?”
    “No. It was monkeys.”
    “Monkeys?”
    “Figurines,” I said, casting the pen aside and rubbing at my
eyes. “Cheap-looking. A set of three. One covers his eyes, one
covers his ears, one covers his mouth. You’ve heard of them?”
    “But of course.”
    “You figure they could be worth much?”
    “I do not know. It would depend on many things.”
    “Worth killing for?”
    “He killed?”
    “Not this time,” I said, then sighed. “The thing is, he’s in
hospital, Pierre. And he’s none too healthy from what I can make
out. I’m really not sure what you’ve got me involved in here.”
    “This I did not know,” he said, in a wistful tone. “It saddens
me to hear it. He was someone I could trust. Like you.”
    “I’ve never killed a man.”
    “Non. But what can I do?”
    “You can find out about these monkeys. See if there’s a market
for them.”
    “But of course. It is nothing. I will begin right away.”
    “And Pierre, no more giving my name to people. Especially not
convicted killers.”
    I hung up and drummed my fingers on my manuscript, syncopating
my thoughts. Three monkeys, three burglars, three men in the café.
Everything in sets of three, like a combination lock I didn’t know
the sequence for. And how many deaths so far? Almost two that I
knew of. I just hoped there wouldn’t be a third.

∨ The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam ∧
10
    A short while later,
I called Victoria and got straight into it.
    “Listen, I’ve been thinking,” I said. “What if there were two
briefcases?”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, supposing Faulks could get his hands on a second
briefcase and plant that in Nicholson’s study.”
    “An identical briefcase.”
    “Exactly. Remember, Faulks is trying to open the safe when he
hears Nicholson come in, and so he hides in the closet. But let’s
say this time he leaves the door open a bit so he can see exactly
what kind of make the